Vince Neil Gets Married, 1/9/05

It’s me, Baz Von Poley again with a long-overdue update about shit going on with the Crüe leading up to their big reunion tour. I’ll be covering the tour starting next month through its entirety, and have plans to catch shows at the beginning, the middle, and even at the very end of their tour. We’ll see just how many I can make, but until then, here’s some updates!

Rapper MC Hammer announced, "It’s Hammer time!" as he escorted Motley Crue frontman Vince Neil down the aisle Sunday at the Four Seasons.

In front of a celebrity crowd that included Tommy Lee, Nikki Sixx, Dennis Rodman and Playboy playmate Brande Roderick, Neil and Lia Gerardini exchanged vows in an emotional ceremony with Hammer officiating.

Randy Kubota, who was supposed to have served as Neil’s best man, was hospitalized with serious injuries after a mysterious accident Friday.

Kubota was found in a drainage ditch near the Las Vegas Beltway and Rainbow Boulevard after leaving a party at Neil’s home, a choked-up Neil told me shortly before the wedding. He apparently had been pushed out of a car, a source said.

First off, in case you didn’t know, Vince Neil got married to his finac? Lia today. Details are sketchy, but we did hear that Vince’s former Surreal Life co-star MC Hammer officiated the ceremonies. I guess Hammer got ordained or something, and now he’s doing weddings in Vegas. Anyhow, here’s the scoop.

Rap star MC Hammer is set to officiate at the wedding of Motley Crue front man Vince Neil on Sunday.

The "Girls, Girls, Girls" rocker, 43, and the "Pray" rapper, 42, struck up an unlikely friendship during the first series of VH1’s reality TV show The Surreal Life in 2002.

Neil gets along so well with 90s star Hammer – real name Stanley Kirk Burrell – he has asked him to conduct the ceremony with his fianc? Lia Gerardini in Las Vegas, Nevada.

MC Hammer was ordained as a minister last year.

The world was actually introduced to Lia on VH1’s "The Remaking of Vince Neil," which aired earlier last week. Did you catch that? If not, in a nutsack, here’s what happened. And I only watched this once, so if I forget anything, you’re just going to have to live with it.

It starts off with a little mini-biography of Vince and his career with the Crüe. There’s interviews with people close to him including his road manager, his drinking buddy, and his fianc? Then it showed Vince in mid-1994, playing at little bars and getting all fucked up wherever he goes. There’s a scene in a casino where Vince loses over 10 grand, then we get to watch Vince as he’s falling-down drunk and trying to walk. Now that was entertaining!

They’re going to try to ‘remake’ Vince by getting him a trainer, doing some plastic surgery, new hair, new clothes, and he’s going to record some kind of new song.

A trainer comes over to Vince’s house and he throws away all kinds of food and pours Vince’s beer down the sink. Vince looks horrified as boxes of cookies, cereal, and cans of Bud are all disposed of. We get a look at part of Vince’s house in Vegas! The walk-in pantry is pretty nice. The trainer proceeds to instruct Vince on his upcoming regimen, and at points throughout the episode we see this huge muscle-guy watching over Vince as he works out.

Vince goes to a plastic surgeon and they tell him what they’re going to do. It’s some weird sci-fi stuff where they’re going to move fat from Vince’s face to different spots, and they draw lines which I guess are incision marks. He looks like he’s joined the Melanesian tribe in New Guinea. Vince goes into surgery and they play some happy-boy music while they basically tear off Vince’s face and suck shit out of there. There is blood everywhere and the whole thing takes 8 hours. It was so graphical that VH1 couldn’t show the entire thing on television, but you can watch more grisly footage of his facelift online here.

He’s all fucked up with bandages on his head and a limo comes and takes him home from the hospital to recuperate. He gets better after a few days and they take off his face bandages. Yikes! He looks like he’s been digested. But apparently, the swelling goes down after a while and he’ll start to notice an improved face.

Vince continues to work out and has lost something like 15 or so pounds. I don’t notice much of a difference, but Lia and her friend seem to think he looks great.

Vince and Lia fly out to Atlanta where they’re going to a studio to meet famed producer Desmond Child, who gave us such immortal gems as KISS’ "I Was Made For Loving You," Bon Jovi’s "Livin’ On A Prayer," Ricky Martin’s "Livin’ La Vida Loca," and a bunch of other radio-friendly hits from everyone from Aerosmith to Kane Roberts. Anyway, Desmond and some other guy give Vince a sappy song to sing about friends and shit. Vince takes all day to get it down and Desmond’s afraid Vince is going to beat him up, but he pulls through and now has a new song that Desmond thinks will be something that modern rock radio can relate to. Good luck with that!

Vince goes back to Vegas. Some fruity guys come over and are going to help Vince pick out some clothes for his big comeback show at the Palms. We get to see the inside of Vince’s closet and he takes everyone out in the garage where he’s got big plastic bins filled with his old stage clothes. The fashion guys ooh and ahh and literally drool over some of the goofy shit Vince has worn over the years.

They take Vince shopping and to get his hair done. I wonder if they stopped for tea somewhere? Well, anyhow, they want Vince to go shorter with his hair but he insists on having it touch his shoulders. They wanted to go for a shorter chop but were worried that Vince’s fanbase would freak if it was too drastic. Shit, they’ve seen Vince at around 220 lbs., so nothing could be worse than that.

Vince gets his hair dyed dark and he looks, well, like Vince with brown hair. He’s naturally brown, but he’ll have to keep dying it that color to hide the grey. Lia seems to dig it.

Vince works out a few more times then he’s ready for the big show at the Palms. He rides out on the stage in a motorcycle he had built for him earlier in the show, and the crowd is all there and yells when he comes out with his new look. Holy shit, was that Keri Kelli playing guitar on stage with Vince? Fuck, that guy is everywhere! Vince sings a Crüe song, and then sings the new song that Desmond wrote about his friend. And that’s about it.

VH1 airs their shows over and over again, so if you missed it, it shouldn’t be a big deal.

Speaking of which, did anyone see the Crüe on New Years Eve when they were on Jay Leno? Vince dropped the ‘F-Bomb,’ meaning, he said "fuck" on live televison. At the end of their performance, Vince said "Hey Tommy! Happy Fuckin’ New Year!" (That was nice of him, considering Tommy slags on Vince quite a bit in his new book Tommyland.) There was no time-delay, so anyone watching Leno got to hear that live. They edited it out for the West Coast broadcast, but you lucky fuckers in the Eastern and Central time zones got an earful.

However, even in the face of recent indecency crackdowns, it appears there will be little the FCC (news – web sites) can do, since Neil’s auld lang syne moment occurred so late. Broadcasting rules are more lax during the late-night "safe harbor," which runs from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.

With a lot of shit that they’ve gotten away with on the air in 2004, I figure Vince’s ‘F-Bomb’ isn’t too big of a deal, but who knows.

Lastly, there were some rumors flying around about Mick not performing on the upcoming Crüe tour, but those are turning out to be bullshit rumors. Good thing we didn’t post anything here at Sludge about it. The rumor was that some guy named DJ Ashba was going to be playing Mick’s parts on the tour. DJ himself cleared this up on his message board.

From Blabbermouth.net:

Former BEAUTIFUL CREATURES guitarist DJ Ashba has rejected Internet reports that he will be playing with MÖTLEY CRÜE during the group’s upcoming tour as the replacement for Mick Mars, whose poor health is said to be an ongoing concern with respect to CRÜE’s upcoming heavy touring schedule.

An apparently unsubstantiated rumor posted at several web sites on Friday (Jan. 7) suggested that Mick will be present at each show and play during the encore and appear during any meet-and-great/signing sessions, but is not well enough to play each gig.

Responding to the rumors, Ashba wrote on the Bulletin Board of his official web site, "Just want to set the record straight. As much as I would love to play on tour with MÖTLEY, it’s simply not true… it’s a rumor. I’ll be in the studio and playing shows with ASHBA. I have all the respect in the world for MÖTLEY CRÜE and I can’t wait to see Mick kick ass, as always."

Well, that’s it for random Crüe updates. Congrats to Vince and Lia and let’s hope this works out better than Vince’s last several marriages.

Hey, by the way, whatever happend to my recap of the Mötley aftershow party? I sent that in like over a month ago and it never got posted. What’s the deal?

Like a jackass, I didn’t save a backup copy. Hopefully floyd or someone can dig that up. It was pretty wild!

This Day in Sludge History

Jimi Hendrix set fire to his guitar live on stage for the first time when he was appearing at The Astoria in London, England. It was the first night of a 24-date tour. The Fender Stratocaster burned on stage by Hendrix sold for £280,000 (British pounds) at a 2008 London auction of rock memorabilia. (1967)

Def Leppard released their fifth studio album 'Adrenalize', the first by the band following the 1991 death of guitarist Steve Clark. Former Dio and Whitesnake guitarist Vivian Campbell, was brought in as the newest member. (1992)

Born on this day, Mick Ralphs, guitarist, Mott The Hoople (1948) and Angus Young, Scottish-born Australian guitarist with AC/DC (1955),